LOS ANGELES—Dustin Penner famously had to miss a game this season after straining his back while eating pancakes, so what did the Los Angeles Kings winger have for breakfast on a morning when he was preparing to test his back by possibly lifting the Stanley Cup?

"We had some kind of eggs and starch here," Penner said after the Kings' morning skate today before Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals against the New Jersey Devils. "Carbohydrate."

"A lot of the time, it's also about the momentum and the luck to have the bounces go your way," said Devils forward Patrik Elias. (AP Photo)

Penner would not reveal what that carbohydrate was, other than saying "yup" when asked if it was a "good starch." His overpuffed beard held no crumby clues.

Whatever Penner has been eating in the playoffs has been working, although not quite as well in the finals. After a regular season in which he had only seven goals and 10 assists in 65 games, Penner has notched 11 points in 19 playoff games, with three goals and eight assists. Against the Devils, though, Penner has a solitary assist in five games.

In a low-scoring series, the blame for the Kings' failure to finish off the Devils after winning the first three games of the series hardly lies with Penner, though. The only players on either side with more than two points are Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams of the Kings, with four, and New Jersey defenseman Bryce Salvador, with three.

The reason the Devils have won the past two games is much the same reason that the Kings won the first three: in evenly played battles between two teams with similar styles, victory has gone to the team that has gotten the better of the bounces. Knowing that, Los Angeles coach Darryl Sutter made it clear, without saying so explicitly, that he would not change his lineup for Game 6.

"Both teams have put veterans in to try to get through the rough water a little bit," Sutter said, referring to the mid-series insertions of Simon Gagne for Los Angeles and Petr Sykora for New Jersey. "Both teams have played similarly. (Travis) Zajac's line plays lots for them, and (Anze) Kopitar's line plays lots too. I don't think anything's different. Both teams' special teams, you look at it, it's almost a saw-off. There's always little subtle things ... little changes where you move guys maybe two or three feet."

A few feet might as well be a few miles in a series in which multiple games have turned on pucks off the goalpost, whether it was Ilya Kovalchuk's would-be game-winner in Game 2, Williams ringing the iron in Game 5 or any of the other shots that just barely stayed out of the net.

"A lot of the time, it's also about the momentum and the luck to have the bounces go your way," said Devils forward Patrik Elias. "It's as simple as that. You have two teams battling hard, sticking with their systems, believing their systems will work for them."

For the most part, both teams systems have worked, leaving no reason for either side to make big changes heading into Game 6, whether they're trying to stay alive, trying to win the Cup or trying to enjoy a delicious breakfast.